Editor's Note - November 2018

We have finally come about to publishing the very first Fenwick
Review in a very new year. Much of our writing staff—and our two
editors—graduated last year, gone like fluttering leaves in the wind, off to
see new places and live new lives. We wish them well, and we miss them.

This Review arrives in your hands during a period
of tension. Scandals of sexual abuse have ravaged the Catholic Church like
wildfires, and even we, a little campus atop a hill in Worcester, haven’t
escaped abuse unscathed. Moreover, Justice Kavanaugh, in a massive victory for
the Republican party, has been confirmed to the Supreme Court. The Church is at
odds with itself, the government’s parties are at odds with each other. What a
time to be alive.

During this semester, I have found less than a few people walking
with smiles on their faces. Perhaps we are all worn by the constant battering
of negative media, fight after fight, argument after argument: shootings,
assaults, names dragged through the mud, lies and deceit circling the whole
mess like flies around a dungpile. Many of us are disappointed in each other,
or even in ourselves.

This issue of the Review is emblematic, in part,
of those disappointments. Our first article dolefully discusses sexual abuse;
another article looks back on the sexual revolution with disappointment. Our
two satire pieces each also have their own gripes. The other three articles,
however, are cheerier in some respects, covering topics such as the rosary,
celebration, and Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

To you, dear reader, holding this Review in
your hands—I would like to remind you that despite our struggles, the world
still has hope and beauty in it. I would like to think that our work as a
newspaper has contributed to that hope, although it has often met with
contention on the Holy Cross campus. We are committed to truth, to the virtues
and codes found in our Church, and to our writers, who find value in gracing
the pages of our little paper with their words.

If you take a quick glance at the photo on the cover, you’ll see
the faint glow of the sun behind a forest’s dark limbs. I find it a fitting
image for this issue and our current moment in time: amid darkness, light
suspended in the distance. Do not forget, in all our society’s turmoil, that
the sun is just hiding behind the clouds.